Sitting down ignoring anything but the phone call and by accident raised my head

Me (After noticing the sign from the guy): Give me a second, there're police officers here
Phone: OK
Police officer: Do you speak English ?
Me (a bit frightened to the police guy): Yes, but can I end this call please ?
Police: Yes but quickly
Me: I have to go now, seems there's something important. Will call you later
Police (After ending the call): Do you have an ID ?
Me: Yes (And showed him my Finnish ID)
Police: Where do you live ?
Me: In that street, I can show you.
Police: We don't go there, just tell us
Me: In this street, number 12. The 2nd door.
Police: People have been complaining that you are speaking in a loud voice at night when it's late.
...

Back in 2002, Gtk 2.x was just released. Efforts were spent porting, rewriting and redesigning parts of GNOME. The aim was GNOME 2.0 and later on 2.x

Previously, we had Gtk which did not support Arabic at all.
At that time, the only usable Arabic capable GUI editor was a closed source one, Axmedit. I was also trying to learn programming and write something useful. Katoob was born at that time. The aim ? provide the Arabic user with something usable and the secret agenda was me learning Gtk and get my hands dirty with C. Not having enough skills to contribute to something as large as GNOME.

It wasn't called Katoob (Which means something like an exaggerated writer in arabic). Me and Alaa wanted to call it gDhad (G is for GNU, Gtk, GPL, ... and Dhad is the letter. Arabic is known as the language of "dhad") but a miscommunication lead to that name.

Arabeyes hosted the project in the beginning. The problem was it was released after the first version of GNOME2. I missed a contest.

The problem is that it was already used by a few of my friends. A lot of testing has been done in the beginning. I still remember feeding it various media files as well as random garbage to see what will happen.

Years later, the whole thing grew into a pile of spaghetti code. It was the time for me to start learning C++. What else can I use to learn it ?
Then 0.5 was born. A bit cleaner, C++, Gtkmm and moving it to my own place. It even survived my migration from CVS to SVN last year.

It also started to be used by more people.

As I become busier with work and as my interests have started to change, I found myself incapable of maintaining it. It's actually a motivation problem more than anything else. I'm not involved into Arabization issues (I was never involved but people claimed I was ;-)) and I wasn't getting enough testing.

I don't use it a lot anymore. Everything supports Arabic now. I don't think we need that project anymore.
I can also use Emacs to read and write Arabic

1) When flying to Rome, don't book a flight that will arrive there late at night.
2) When you are flying from Rome, don't book a flight on a Sunday and don't book it early. Busses are never on time and the frequency of trains is less so you might end up losing your flight.
3) Fucking morons can't run an airport.
4) I couldn't find anyone to ask for help.
5) The fucking morons change the gates without announcing and I discovered that by accident. I could've missed my 2nd flight.
6) Stupid Americans, please keep some energy to fight with your travel agency instead of fighting with me because you are so paranoid that you think I want to bypass you in the queue.
7) The fucking morons can't ask more people to be at the service point to handle emergencies.
8) No one knows anything in the fucking airport.
9) The Italian Cuisine is damn awesome. I don't believe I'm moving back to "Meal number 6 please...".
10) Rome is fantastic and you gotta love it... The city is marvelous and you discover great things as you walk.
11) The fucking morons at the airport delayed our Finnair flight and affected our Finnish reliability.
12) Sardinian cuisine is fucking fantastic and tasty. I never ate like this before.
13) The mixture of the 2 things is far better than eating each one of them alone.
14) I don't believe I liked that thing he offered us although similar thing is available in Egypt.
15) I'd have payed a 1000 euros if the restaurant owner had asked
16) If you don't have enough cash, you are doomed. They don't accept credit cards.
17) Corruption, the pub will be closed at a time depending on the owner relations with the police.
18) The girl from Bosnia was pretty.
19) I don't believe she changed her religion to Christianity just to drink!
20) They offer drinks in plastic containers. There's nothing better than broken glass on the floor.
21) Please please believe me when I say that I'm from Egypt even if I don't look like one. It's not that I hate other nationalities but it's because it's me.
22) The pub was very small.
23) I fucking ate falafel from a Syrian guy. Awesome.
24) Alaa, please don't interfere with my food. I don't like chili!
25) And again, the shoes is important, you'd better wear it even though you can still walk without it.
26) How come Rome is colder than Helsinki ?
27) I still want to get married :-)
28) This line has been left blank on purpose...
29) I'm sure I have more to say.
30) Happy 2008
31) I wish 2008 will be like 2006

Now I remembered when I was lost in CDG airport. The only person I found to ask spoke french. I was asking her in English, she was replying in french. I didn't understand her and probably she didn't understand me. Yet I managed to find out what I wanted!!

After missing the Paris Helsinki flight:
"Here's your new ticket. But you will have to go out and re-check in again. I can't give you the boarding card as the other flight is using a different system." And also: "Tell them about your luggage when you check in so it will be with you on the same flight".
-- Air france customer care, Charles de gaulle airport.

Of course the bags arrived next day. What do you think ? The people working in Charles de gaulle can not give up their habits of delaying your bags.